Harlan's Letter Home

Dear Mom,


How are things back home? Did Fisher finally buy that gravbreaker he had his eye on for the last five years? I know he wanted that thing so badly.

I miss you guys. Things are okay up here. Our studies and stuff are really kicking up, with graduation in a month. We’ve done a month-long tour around the system, Earth to Jupiter and back. A couple of guys lost it and had to be put into stasis-comas for the rest of the trip, but I made it through okay. I also did my first solo flyby and docking at Eden Station. That was amazing. Oh, yeah! I also got the top score in my first blind atmosphere re-entry. It was kinda terrifying, though. Maybe the most frightened I’ve ever been.

I’ve made a few friends up here. There’s a kid who’s a real whiz with the navigation software that the ships run. It’s neat, we really work well together. His name is Jordan. There’s also a cute girl in my class, her name is Fusey. I think she likes me, who knows, maybe I’ll ask her out. There’s also a really great pilot name Alastair, here. He and I have a sort of friendly rivalry. We get along just fine, we just like to sort of rag on each other, goad each other into performing our best. The four of us are usually together, we get chow together, and spend our downtime together. Call ourselves the Four Horsemen.

I know it’s really corny.

We keep hearing people talk about a war coming. I don’t know, it kinda scares me. I guess I just want you to pray that it doesn’t happen. They also talk about inertial negation and mass suppression drives, so you never know what to believe.

Anyway, I have an astrometrics class to go to, so I’ll write you later.

Love you, tell everyone I said hi.


Harlan.

Dear Mom,

I know it’s been a while since I wrote you. But a lot of things have changed. War is here. Fusey and Alastair are dead. Almost everyone in my entire graduating class is dead. But, I’m okay. So is Jordan. We actually serve together, now. We’re on the same ship. We’re on a Georgian class cruiser, the Vigor.

I actually think that he’s most of the reason I’m still alive. Of course, he’d say the same about me. We’ve been through some tough stuff. War is scary as hell, Mom. Battles are terrifying. It’s not like pew-pew lasers of the movies. It’s ships ramming each other in the dead of space. Gyroscope craft spin huge spiked balls that slam into the enemy, tearing hull away. Some have jury-rigged blades that slice through your hull and vent air, so your entire crew is sucked out screaming into the void. And boarding operations, where you can hear your men being blown away and slaughtered, before you have to initiate massive gee-force maneuvers to pulp human beings inside your ship and hope the tug crews and repair teams can clean it out. There are magnetic mines that are blown out of airlocks that attach to any foreign ships hull and blow the hell out of it.

It’s bloody and horrible and the stuff of madness.

Doesn’t bother Jordan, though. I think if it wasn’t for him, I would have gone AWOL. It sickens me, now. All the killing and fear. It gets to you. But, you know what, Mom? We’re good at it. Jordan and I. We’re the best. No one can beat us, and we’ve whupped everything they’ve sent after us.

And then, there are times when it makes me feel alive. That rush of adrenaline and terror make you feel like there’s nothing else in the world that matters. I have a purpose, I have meaning. I’m a soldier, a pilot. I keep my people alive. Sometimes that’s good enough. To know that I’m not alone, and that everyone else around me WANTS to be here, they ain’t some snot-nosed draftee. I serve with enlisted men. As much as I hate it, as much as it scares me, I think I belong here.

Love you,

Harlan.